Electrical connector systems generally include circuits and components on one or more interconnected circuit boards. Examples of circuit boards in an electrical connector system can include daughter boards, motherboards, backplane boards, midplane boards, or the like. Electrical assemblies can further include an electrical connector that provides an interface between electrical components, and provide electrically conductive paths for electrical communications data signals and/or electrical power so as to place the electrical components in electrical communication with each other.
For instance, referring to FIG. 1, a conventional electrical connector system 101 includes en electrical card-edge connector 100 electrically connected between a first and second printed circuit board 102 and 104. The connector 100 is illustrated as a straddle-mount style card-edge connector 100 that provides an electrically conductive path between traces proximate to an edge of the first printed circuit board 102 and traces proximate to an edge of the second printed circuit board 104, which is illustrated as being co-planar with the first printed circuit board 102. Such a configuration may be well suited for an electrical connector system in an enclosure, such as a 1U rack-mount server.
The electrical card-edge connector 100 can further be physically secured to at least one or both of the first and second printed circuit boards 102 and 104 to which it electrically connects. For instance, the electrical connector system 101 can further include hardware 106 such as screws, nuts, and the like, that provides a secure physical connection between the electrical card-edge connector 100 and the first printed circuit board 102. Unfortunately, substantial time and resources are associated with the attachment and removal of the hardware 106 when connecting and disconnecting the electrical card-edge connector 100 to and from the first printed circuit board 102, for instance when constructing the electrical connector system 101, thereby increasing the manufacturing cost and mean-time-to-repair the electrical connector system 101.
What is therefore desired is an electrical connector having a simplified apparatus that is configured to be physically secured to a complementary electrical component.